Order Discrepancy SOP
Order discrepancies destroy customer trust fast and burn support bandwidth when resolution is ad hoc. This SOP aligns support, warehouse, and ops teams on one clear investigation path.
Where merchants get exposed
- Conflicting data sources cause repeated ticket loops and poor resolution quality.
- Resolution decisions vary by agent and shift instead of following a standard.
- Root causes are not captured, so the same discrepancy types keep recurring.
Implementation checklist
- Create a discrepancy taxonomy with required evidence for each category.
- Define system-of-record priority: OMS over WMS over carrier event stream.
- Collect all customer evidence in one intake to avoid repeated asks.
- Apply fixed decision rules for replace, refund, and reship outcomes.
- Require root-cause tagging before any case is closed.
- Auto-escalate unresolved cases after SLA threshold is breached.
- Review top discrepancy clusters weekly with functional owners.
KPI scorecard to track
- • Discrepancy rate per 1,000 orders
- • Discrepancy SLA attainment
- • Re-opened discrepancy rate
- • Cost per discrepancy incident
- • Repeat root-cause rate
5-day execution sprint
- Day 1: Publish discrepancy taxonomy and evidence requirement checklist.
- Day 2: Configure assignment rules and SLA automation.
- Day 3: Train team on decision matrix and root-cause capture.
- Day 4: Open a daily discrepancy triage queue.
- Day 5: Publish first root-cause distribution report.